Man shot, killed sitting on train station bench near Georgia college campus, cops say
Another person has been shot near a Georgia university campus, police told media outlets, a few days after a separate shooting injured two students.
A man was shot and killed Oct. 31 outside of a MARTA train station in Atlanta near the south corner of Georgia State University’s campus, WSB-TV reported. A suspect in connection to the afternoon shooting has been located, the MARTA Police Department told the outlet.
MARTA is Atlanta’s combined bus and rail metro system.
The man who was killed seemed to be sitting on a bench in front of the train station when he was shot, police told several local news outlets. The identity of the deceased has not yet been released by police, Georgia Public Broadcasting reports, but the department doesn’t think any GSU students were involved.
A suspect is in police custody for questioning, police told WSB-TV, but the department has not yet figured out a potential motive for the shooting.
“We have some witnesses. We’ve taken statements of the incident. We’ll have to review video cameras and just determine everything that happened. It’s still really early in the investigation,” Maj. Matthew Carrier told WSB-TV.
Just a few days earlier, four people — including two GSU students — were shot at John Wesley Dobbs Avenue and Courtland Street on Oct. 29, according to a news release from university President Brian Blake.
The shooting occurred around 5 a.m. when “non-GSU individuals” fired shots in a “nearby altercation,” Blake said.
The students were “recovering quickly,” Blake said in another Oct. 29 release. In the wake of the shooting, Blake invited students to attend both a listening session focused on hearing feedback from campus community members, as well as a town hall on campus safety.
During the Oct. 30 town hall, university administration promised to pursue safety improvements on campus, such as equipping the university with better outdoor cameras and lighting, Fox 5 reports.
“Even for me as I’m in the city, I’m very mindful of where I’m located. I’m mindful of situations that may not be safe. So I really have impressed that upon them,” Blake told Fox 5. “But it’s our responsibility to make them feel safe, to make them be safe.”
There were fewer than 10 homicides recorded by the MARTA Police Department between 2017 and 2022, according to the department’s data.
